


Safety

by daretoliveforever



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M, Mentions of Rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-03
Updated: 2013-02-03
Packaged: 2017-11-28 02:40:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/669301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daretoliveforever/pseuds/daretoliveforever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Harry saves Niall from being raped and they fall in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safety

Niall has always been impulsive. He would always be doing things without thinking of the outcome. That’s one reason why we’ve always been great mates.

From the time I meet Niall; we’ve been getting into trouble and loving every moment of it. I never thought that Niall’s impulsive behavior would have caused him to get into any serious sticky situations. But, I should have expected it. Niall has a tendency to piss people off, especially when he is so drunk off his ass that he doesn’t even know half of what he’s saying.

But of course those few times where he’s almost had the shit beat out of him, I was there to smooth things over.

We’re partners in crime and no matter what I will always be by his side. He just doesn’t know it yet.

~*~

“Niall get your lazy ass out here.” I screamed from outside Niall’s house.

It was nearly 1 in the afternoon and Niall was still sleeping. That was typical for Niall though. This was pretty much routine. Each weekend, I would come by Niall’s house; wake him up by jumping on his back or pouring some liquid on his head. We would then go to the park where he would play the guitar, later in the evening we would find a party to go to and drink and dance tell we couldn’t remember what we were doing.

Maura, Niall’s mum, opened the door for me as I walked up to the porch. She gave me a sweet smile as she let me in. I instantly ran up the stairs to wake Nialler up.

As I walked into Niall’s room, I was greeted by his snoring and his ass sticking up in the air.

I chuckled at his odd sleeping position. I walked quietly to Niall’s bed so to not wake him. His blond hair lay gently across the frame of his face. His eyelashes gracefully lying across his cheekbones which were flushed a soft pink color. It took me a moment to collect my thoughts. Niall looked so damn peaceful sleeping that I was getting lost in the elegancy of it.

I walked closer, hovering over the bed. I brought my hand up and with full force brought it down to smack Niall’s bum.

Niall woke with a yelp as he reached down to rub his now sore bum.

Seeing Niall flustered in the early stages of wake, I was rolling on the floor laughing. He shot me a death glare which was followed by a pillow being thrown at me head and him muttering that I was an asshole.

“Come on Nialler, get up.” I said behind my laughter.

Niall grabbed his sheets and pulled them up over his head, shielding himself from the light.

I got up off the floor and tried to yank the blankets off of him.

“Noooo. Go away Haz.” Niall grumbled.

“Come on Niall, it’s almost 1. You gotta get up.” I said trying to coax Niall out of his bed.

He just buried himself further into his mattress, completely ignoring me. That was new. Normally when I would wake him up, he would always roll out of bed with a smile right away.

“Niall, what’s wrong? Why won’t you get up?” I was worried. Niall never acted like this. He was being rather strange this morning.

“Nothing’s wrong. I just want to sleep.” He said. The way he said it sounded off. He didn’t mean it. I could tell. He tried to mean what he said, but there was something underlining it all. There was something bothering him, something he didn’t want to share.

I sat down beside Niall. He had slipped his head out of the covers, but wouldn’t meet my eyes. He just sat there, not saying anything, just staring off into space.

Whenever Niall was like this, it was almost impossible to get him to talk.

I gave Niall a gently nudge on the shoulder. He knew what it meant. He slid over in his bed to make room for myself. I crawled into the warm bed, lying beside Niall who still refused to say anything.

“Niall, what’s the matter?” I whispered to him

“It’s nothing really.” I said quietly. His bright blue eyes looked up to meet mine. I could see he was lying, it was almost as if his eyes were saying ‘there’s something wrong, but I don’t know what to do’.

To be honest, the look in his eyes threw me off. I had seen Niall at his lowest before, but I had never seen this emotion in his eye. It was like he was scared.

“I know something’s wrong. What is it? You know you can tell me anything, right?”

He nodded his head.

“It’s nothing honestly. I’m just over thinking it is all. It’s just something that happened last weekend at the party we went to.” Niall voice trailed off. He looked back down, embarrassed.

I reached my hand up towards his chin and lifted his head, forcing him to look me in the eye.

“What happened?” I asked quietly.

Niall shook his head, clearly uncomfortable. “Somebody said something to me, it just… it just confused me and kind of scared me.”

My eyebrows shot up. I was confused. I was with Niall the entire night last weekend. I don’t remember anything happening. I thought he was too drunk to remember anything anyway.

“Was it rude? Did they threaten to hurt you?” I asked concern leaking into my voice.

Niall chuckled, a smile forming on his lips. “No nothing like that.”

I breathed out a sigh relieved that it wasn’t anything horrible or threatening. I could tell Niall was uncomfortable about it, so I decided not to push the subject.

“You still want to go to the party tonight?” I asked.

Niall’s eyes light up by my question. He sat up in bed, his arms stretching above him. His shirt rode up along his back; the smooth skin of Niall’s back was distracting _…. I have problems_.

“Hell yeah. I’m ready for a couple drinks already.” Niall laughed.

I lifted my eyes to meet his now shinning blue ones. I smiled a cocky grin and jumped out of bed to get ready for the party.

~*~

It was only 11pm, but the party was already well underway. The music could be heard down the street. People were standing outside the house, each with a plastic cup in hand. Some people were already completely wasted. I could have sworn some guy was running around naked already. That had to have been a new record.

Niall and I walked up to the house; people were dancing and drinking left and right. We made our way towards the drinks where some other drunken guy gave us each a cup. The guy handing out the drinks was so wasted that he wasn’t even able to pour the beer without it spilling everywhere.

Not long after Niall and I had a first beer, we had another. And another. We ended up losing track of how much we drank somewhere after 6… I think. I didn’t matter though.

I was currently playing a game of beer pong with some other people. The game was getting pretty intense. I was playing with a guy named Christian. He was knocking back the beer like there was no tomorrow. I was honestly surprised with how well he was doing especially since he was so wasted that he couldn’t stand properly.

Niall was standing behind me, encouraging me and my partner. I was chugging back my beer when Niall got up.

“I’ll be right back mate, just going to get another beer.” He said before stumbling off.

As the game ended and Christian and I were celebrating our epic win, I realized that Niall never came back. I got up clumsily and began searching for my drunk, blond headed friend.

I walked into the kitchen thinking that he got hungry, which wouldn’t have surprised me at all, but he wasn’t there. I looked out back, and several of the rooms, but Niall wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

I was about to walk out front to see if Niall had decided to head home when a girl with a high pitch voice stopped me.

“Are you Harry?” She said giggly. Her voice was too high and she was standing way to close. I could smell vomit on her breath. It was absolutely disgusting, but I never met her before so I was surprised that she knew who I was.

“Uh, yeah I’m Harry.” I said loudly over the beat of the music.

“Do you have a blond Irish friend?” Her high voice sounding like nails on a chalk board. She was talking about Niall.

“Yeah, Niall. Have you seen him?”

“Yep, he was being pulled down the hall by some guy.” She said pointing down the hallway with a manicured finger. “He was screaming ‘Harrreeehh’ but no one came to him, so I figured I’d find who Harry was, you of course.”

He was screaming? What the hell did that mean? And who was dragging him down the hall?

“Wait, who was he with?” I asked. I was afraid, what if something bad was happening to him.

“Don’t know.” She said before walking off.

 _Oh this can’t be good._ I thought to myself before taking off down the hallway.

I threw all the doors open, looking for Niall. Niall wasn’t the kind of person to have a one night stand at a party, especially with a guy. Niall didn’t swing that way, though I often wished he did. At the last door, I could hear struggling and screaming from behind the closed door.

I tried to open it, but it was stuck. Not locked, just stuck, like something was in front of it. With as much force as I could get, I rammed the door, causing it to fly open.

Sure enough Niall was in there. He looked terrified. A large man was hovering over Niall, completely naked. He was trying to pull Niall’s jumper over his head, but Niall was struggling. The man grabbed Niall’s arms and pinned them above his slender body. Neither had noticed my entrance.

“Hey!” I screamed

The large man looked up. His eyes were glazed over and bloodshot. He was drunk and possibly high. “Fuck off.” He said before turning back to Niall.

Niall looked up with terror in his eyes.

“Harry! Help me!” He screamed.

The man hovering over him slapped Niall hard across the cheek. “Shut the fuck up will you.”

Seeing the man’s hand make contact with Niall’s face, I ran and tackled the large man. Everything in my body told me to get this guy away from Niall. I didn’t care if I were to get hurt; I did what I had to. I was going to protect Niall at all costs.

Now tackling a naked man would normally be ok with me, but when they were aggressive, drunk, high AND trying to harm my best mate, well I was pissed.

I managed to knock the large block to the ground. He was struggling underneath me, but being larger than myself, he knocked me off of him with ease. He didn’t even bother to fight back; he just tried to get back to where Niall was.

“Niall, run!” I screamed. Niall was sat, frozen in fear. When he saw the man coming back toward him again, he scrambled backwards trying to distance himself from the man.

The man stood up and took off to grab Niall’s wrist. He pulled him back and tossing him back onto the bed, trying to wrestle Niall’s trousers off of him. Niall was kick at the man, trying to get away.

I stood and looked around the tiny room for something he could us was a weapon of some sort. I spotted a bathroom, and ran into it looking for something. I noticed a curling iron was left on the sink. It was still on from whoever last used it, and still blazing hot. I yanked the cord out of the wall and ran back toward the man assaulting Niall.

I smacked the curling iron against the man’s back, causing the skin to bluster almost immediately. The man screamed out in pain, stumbling backward gripping his back.

The man was stumbling close to the bathroom. I ran up and shoved the man into the room, slamming the door shut. Thinking quickly, I pulled the dresser in front of the door so the man wouldn’t be able to get out.

I turned around to see Niall lying in a crumpled mess on the bed. I ran over to Niall’s side, grabbing him and pulling him into a tight embrace.

“It’s ok Niall. Everything will be ok.” I whispered into Niall’s ear. I was running my hands through his silky hair, trying to calm him down.

“Harry… he tried… he tried too –” Niall tried to say, but his sobs were too much, he wasn’t able to speak. I shushed him, pulling him up and guiding him out of the room.

We could still hear the man pounding on the bathroom door as we walked out.

I quickly found Janet, who was the one throwing the party and told her what happened. She was horrified but promised to have something done about the man. She would probably have her oversized boyfriend beat the living shit out of him.

Niall and I walked out into the cool night air. Niall’s cries had turned into a soft whimper as we walked back to my house.

~*~

I woke up with a killer headache. The sun was streaming through the windows which didn’t help my hangover at all. I felt a light weight against my chest. I looked down to see a sleeping Niall clinging to me. There were faded tear tracks against his pale cheeks.

I remembered what had happened last night. Niall was almost raped. Luckily, I had gotten there in enough time to stop it before anything serious had happened. Although, it did scare Niall. He had cried himself to sleep last night. He refused to be left alone and chose to sleep on me instead.

I wasn’t arguing of course.

I gently nudged Niall, trying to coax him out of his dream. He nuzzled closer to me, his grip tightening on my t-shirt. His eyes opened. He looked up at me and smiled. It wasn’t forced, but it wasn’t as full of life as usual. It was just there.

“Hey, how’re you doing?” I asked running my fingers through his hair.

“Fine. I guess. Better.” He said his Irish accent deeper than normal.

“You want to talk about it?”

Niall shifted his body, his head falling into the curve of my neck. I could feel his breath dancing across my skin. It sent a shiver down my spine.

“Not really…” He sighed

“But…” I knew that he would want to talk about it.

“But, I should.” He was quiet for a little while. “I don’t know, I was just getting another beer, and then he said something to me. I didn’t hear what he said, but the next thing I knew, he was pulling me down the hall. I was screaming for you, I didn’t think you heard me. Then he pulled me into the room and then… that’s when things got bad.”

Niall had started trembling as he recalled what happened.

“But then you stopped him.” He whispered

“Yeah, I guess I did.” I said quietly.

I looked down, my eyes locked onto Niall’s eyes. They were shinning bright. Then he did something I never thought would happen.

Niall tilted his head up, his lips brushed against mine. Only for a second, but it made my stomach flutter and my heart began to race.

“What… what was that for.” I said as he pulled back. I couldn’t help but smile. Niall just laid back down into the crock of my neck.

“Because you were the only one to care.” He said simply.

“That’s not true, others care about you.” What I said was true. Others did care about Niall. I cared about Niall in a different way, but others would still do anything to help him.

“Maybe, but when I was being pulled into the room and I was screaming, no one stopped him. They just stared. You were the only one to go looking for me. You’ve always been there for me. Always looking out for me.” Niall’s eyes glazed over as he recalled the party and everything that had happened in our past.

I laid my head against Niall’s. I smiled.

“Remember yesterday morning when I was acting weird?” Niall asked. Of course I remembered, but why was he bring it up now.

“Yeah, what about it?”

“Well, last week a girl came up to me and said that I was lucky to have a boyfriend as cute and nice as you.” Niall chuckled.

I was stunned.

“She thought we were really cute together. I didn’t think much of it, but the next morning I thought about it. And well, what she said made sense I guess. I mean, I never thought of you more than a friend, but I knew that you were special to me. And you always will be. I guess it just took me awhile to realize how special you are to me. And last night showed me that I really, _really_ do care about you like that.” Niall had flushed a deep shade of crimson, slightly embarrassed from the confession.

I, on the other hand, was absolutely overjoyed. I had wanted to hear Niall say that for the longest time, and now that it has happened I didn’t know what to do.

My grip had tightened around Niall.

I brought my hand up and lifted Niall’s chin. He looked up at me. His eyes were dazzling and bright, deep shades of blue swirled together, they left me breathless.

“I will always keep you safe.” I said. I leaned into Niall and gently placed my lips to his. It was a warm and caring kiss. It was perfect.


End file.
